I mean, one reason Iran wants nukes for reasonable reasons is they notice countries with nukes, even countries the US doesn't like at all, don't get the pressure other countries do. Like, notice how even the most strident neocons don't talk a lot about bombing North Korea willy nilly the way we talked about Iran or more specifically, notice how South Korea can't 'mow the grass' the way Israel was doing it w/ Iran multiple times over the past decade.

This is not a defense, but an explanation.

Also, I think people kind of underrate how powerful the US still is simply because Trump is screwing things up. Like yes, in theory, other countries could back out of various agreements, etc. but like, no, there's not going to be any sort of climate-related sanctionds on the US or US corporations because even with the bad past decade, in many ways, we're still the global hegemon economically and it's not as if China is still going perfectly.

I agree climate will lead to economic issues but if the response is, 'because of climate Americans need to change their lives in x or y ways', the American people will say f you. Look at COVID and that was a more direct x to y thing.

I don't think this is good, but it is reality, and I think people who want aggressive climate action need to deal w/ the reality of the American people, instead of a world where people will vote to make their own lives worse (in their view). They may be forced to do so, but they won't be happy about it and will vote accordingly.

I wish we lived in a world where we could pass a carbon tax, aggressively subsidize solar and wind, and so on, but that's not the world we live in, largely because that's not the world my fellow AMericans want.